State Department

“The Department of Justice Is a Hydra”: Trump’s Witch Hunt Drives the Deep State Underground

If the Deep State didn’t exist before, the president has brought it into being with his attacks on Bruce Ohr. The mood in some pockets of the State Department, one former official said, has “turned normal-functioning government into a scary thing for regular civil servants.”
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House Oversight Committee member Rep. Darrell Issa during a break in a closed hearing to interview Bruce G. Ohr on Aug. 28, 2018.By Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo.

At the downtown bistros and power-lunch venues that serve as official Washington’s unofficial commissaries, there is a creeping sense of paranoia. It’s not just the heightened political sniping, which has turned incestuous K Street burghers into blood enemies and D.C.’s swampland into a Superfund site, or the McCarthyite hunt for an anonymous op-ed author, or the mountain of subpoenas being prepared in the back rooms of Democratic congressional offices. Instead, for those career civil servants whose bureaus have attracted the suspicion of the White House, much of the fear is emanating from the president himself. “That is the new normal. We meet in the back rooms of coffee shops, and only set up in-person conversations and talk in private,” an ex-administration official said of interactions with their former colleagues. “They are absolutely paranoid, even when the discussion is of the most anodyne nature.”

It’s a cosmic irony of Trump’s Washington that the same people Donald Trump has arbitrarily branded the “Deep State”—Never Trumpers, so-called Obama holdovers, establishment Republicans, and those who disagree with Trump’s agenda—have been forced underground, meeting clandestinely, communicating furtively. Ordinary staffers have been converted into reluctant “resistance” fighters. While it is business as usual in many corners of Foggy Bottom, the mood in some pockets of the State Department, the former official said, has “turned normal-functioning government into a scary thing for regular civil servants.” One source recounted stories of employees in select State Department bureaus decorating their cubicles with pro-Trump imagery, so as to avoid suspicion. If the Deep State didn’t exist before, Trump has brought it into being.

The Trumpian turmoil surrounding Bruce Ohr has been particularly chilling, according to more than a dozen current and former administration officials who I spoke with in reporting this story. Ohr, a career civil servant who served as associate deputy U.S. attorney general in the Southern District of New York, and, later, head of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering division, was little known outside the department—until Trump began tweeting about him in August, amplifying conspiracy theories surrounding Ohr’s work on the Steele dossier, and exposing him to a tidal wave of online harassment. “It is incredible that individual career public servants would be singled out by the president. The fact that Bruce is among the group of public servants that the president has named is very surprising,” said Julie Zebrak, a former D.O.J. attorney who worked with Ohr. “It is certainly not normal. We have to continue to say things are not normal.”

There is a stark difference between Trump’s attacks on Ohr and politically appointed individuals like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his deputy Rod Rosenstein, and F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray, all of whom have come under presidential fire. “As bad as it may be to see the president take on in public his own political appointees, it is a very different proposition when he goes after career federal employees,” Max Stier, the president and C.E.O. of the nonpartisan government watchdog, Partnership for Public Service, told me. Political appointees serve at the pleasure of the president; civil servants serve the United States government. “[Political appointees] really can’t stay if they can’t support the president,” a former political appointee who left their post told me. Everyone else “should be immune and protected from political pressure,” this person added, noting the dangers of self-censorship. “What it will do is water down the analysis and advice the president gets. People will lie low, and say as little as possible, and wait it out.”

In another era, Ohr’s interactions with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the infamous Trump-Russia document, would have been uncontroversial. “Having those kinds of liaison relationships is a normal part of the work he and I did together,” said Eugene Casey, who worked closely with Ohr in 2005 and 2006 as then-chief of the F.B.I.’s Eurasian organized crime unit. “For him to be reprimanded for having those types of relationships seemed, to me, absurd. Just absurd.” Of course, the conspiracy theories surrounding Ohr are not limited to his work with Steele. In another hallmark of the Trump era, Ohr has also been targeted in conservative media for his wife’s work with Fusion GPS, the political intelligence firm that contracted with Steele. In the last month, 5 of Trump’s 13 tweets about Ohr have also referenced his wife, Nellie. “Bruce & Nelly Ohr’s bank account is getting fatter & fatter because of the Dossier that they are both peddling,” he wrote in one. At another point, he told reporters outside the White House that Ohr’s security clearance should be rescinded. “I suspect I’ll be taking it away very quickly,” he said. “For him to be in the Justice Department, and to be doing what he did—that is a disgrace.”

For an official like Ohr, losing one’s security clearance is tantamount to professional castration. “What is happening to Mr. Ohr is so upsetting to some of us, because if his security clearance is arbitrarily removed, it is as if he is being fired,” Casey added. “If he did violate some D.O.J. procedure that I am not aware of—he may very well have done so—[that] is a matter for the Office of the Inspector General of [the] D.O.J. to look into, not a political matter . . . The president calls him a disgrace, and I would like to know: what is the basis for that? Because I don’t see it.”

Another irony: if Trump ultimately follows through on his threats, the impact on the Russia probe would be negligible. “If he strips Bruce Ohr of his clearance and he can no longer work on an investigation, then the next person in line steps in. The Department of Justice is a Hydra. The entire government bureaucracy is not about individuals; they do not make or break an investigation. There is always someone that then steps into those shoes and continues it. I think the firing of James Comey is the ultimate example of that,” Asha Rangappa, a former F.B.I. counter-intelligence agent, explained. “[Trump] is going to keep trying to cut off these heads. It is one thing to do it for former officials who really don’t have any ongoing involvement, but for an active investigation . . . He doesn’t seem to understand that the wheels of justice are turning, and that even as the president of the United States, there is very little that he can do to stop it.”

On the other end of downtown Washington, across the National Mall in Foggy Bottom, the president’s attacks on Ohr and his Justice Department colleagues have sent a clear signal to the diplomatic corps. “Targeting people and going after them—potentially with the consequence of taking from them their livelihood—that is very, very serious stuff,” one State Department official told me. ”I know it has been on everybody’s mind, and it is by design.” A second State Department official echoed the sentiment. “I think these actions only further confirm the politicized approach this administration takes towards civil servants. It certainly has a chilling effect on those of us who might engage in political activities that are consistent with the Hatch Act,” they told me, referencing the 1939 law that constrains the political activity of federal employees.

Allegations of reprisals against State Department employees for their perceived politics or lack of loyalty to Trump preceded the controversy over Ohr. Last week, Foreign Policy reported that the Office of the Inspector General has opened an investigation into the actions of Mari Stull, a political appointee in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs. According to F.P., Stull—a former food lobbyist who blogged about wine under the pseudonym “Vino Vixen”—is allegedly under investigation for using her position to punish State Department employees for their work on Obama-era policies, “vetting” bureau employees and making homophobic remarks to at least two gay State Department staffers. (A State Department spokesperson said in a statement to F.P. that the “department fully cooperates with investigations of both the Department’s I.G. and the permanent Office of Special Counsel.”)

“The entire [government] system is based on this notion that these people are there under the merit system, because of their qualifications to do the job, and it is not, in fact, appropriate to take action against them because of, again, their perceived political beliefs,” Stier explained. “They are not only bad in terms of what the outcomes will be for the public, but in some instances, they are illegal. It is actually illegal to fire a federal employee, or to take a negative personnel action against them, on the basis of their political beliefs or perceived political beliefs.”

The O.I.G.’s decision to look into Stull was welcomed by diplomats I spoke with. Still, expectations remain low that any substantive action will be taken. Brian Hook, a former Tillerson deputy who was revealed to have compiled a list of staffers suspected of being disloyal to the president, and to have exchanged such information with the White House, for instance, was never reprimanded or fired. In fact, he was tapped last month to lead Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s new Iran Action Group. “I don’t think anything has changed, and I don’t think anything will change, at least until there is some meaningful oversight,” the first State Department official told me. “I think a lot of people are aghast and deflated over the fact that there has been no meaningful review of his actions, and, that, even with the very serious information that is out there, he essentially gets another cush and plum job. It is ironic that it is on the subject matter on which he routed out one of the department’s experts.” (“Following the initial congressional inquiries, this matter was referred to two independent entities for review: the State Department Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Office of the Special Counsel,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.)

“Vino Vixen” is not the only political appointee sources say has Trumpified the State Department. As I previously reported, White House ideologues like Stephen Miller have also exerted influence throughout Foggy Bottom with the appointment of political allies like Andrew Veprek (who was recently in the news for criticizing a United Nations resolution that condemned racism as a threat to democracy) at the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, and refugee-program skeptic John Zadrozny at Policy Planning. Foreign Policy adds another name: Bethany Kozma, who officials say has politicized what are normally technical deliberations at the U.S. Agency for International Development. “In some bureaus, there is a clear viewpoint that you have to show that you are a Republican if you want to advance, even for career folks,” a congressional staffer told me.

For civil servants who might otherwise protest, Trump’s attacks on Ohr have underscored that such ideological vetting is not only acceptable, but, arguably, encouraged. “If they see the president attacking, directly, a career employee, there are always going to be ramifications for the people that speak out. I mean, half the people will tell us stuff; the other half are scared to say anything, because they don’t know what is going to happen, and they don’t see any ramifications [for] those people, who are engaged in bad behavior,” the congressional staffer continued. “There is a chilling effect, for sure.”